The President has declared 27 December 2022 a public holiday. Public holidays are regulated by the Public Holidays Act. Section 2(1) provides that where any public holiday falls on a Sunday, the following Monday shall be a public holiday – but this year Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, and the following Monday is already a public holiday in its own right (the Day of Goodwill). This means that South Africans, until today, could only expect 11 public holidays this year.

However, the Public Holidays Act was amended in 1995 to allow the President to “by proclamation in the Gazette declare any day to be a public holiday throughout the Republic” (section 2A) – this is a provision that we have all encountered previously – it is under this provision that the President has declared election days to be public holidays. It is also under this section that the President has declared 27 December 2022 to be a public holiday.

This means that employees are entitled to the day off and to be paid as they normally would on that day; alternatively, should they be required to work on that day, they must be paid as required by section 18 of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, a sectoral determination, or a prevailing collective agreement, for the time worked on a public holiday. Section 2(2) of the Act does further provide that any public holiday can be exchanged for another day by agreement between employer and employee.

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